Production, Trade and Use of Steel across the World

Being first produced in 200 BC and first put on mass production in 1850s steel nowadays is arguably the most important material used in engineering and construction throughout the world. Being an alloy of iron and carbon, steel accounts for over 3500 various grades with different chemical, environmental and physical properties, 75% of which have been created in the past 2 decades. As of 2012, it was produced 1,545 million tons of crude steel in the World with China being an absolute leader accounting for about a half of world's crude steel production, according to the data provided by World Steel Association. Concerning international trade, Brazil is the biggest exporter of iron ore accounting for about one fourth of the world's iron ore exports, while China is the biggest importer. These and other statistics on annual and monthly dynamics of production of wide variety of steel products from World Steel Association is available below.

Related Data Insights

The Forbes Global 2000 is an annual ranking of the world’s top 2000 public companies published by Forbes magazine since 2003. The companies are ranked according to four basic metrics: profit, sales, assets and market value - and are broken down by industries, including 28 companies from Iron and Steel Industry.In total, the world's 28 biggest public companies from Iron and Steel industry account for $1.62 trillion in assets, $513 billion in revenues, and $300 billion in market value, according to the 2016 list. The world's largest steel company by market value is Citic Pacific, Hong Cong based company.

During the last 10 years, a small group of emerging economies in Asia have supported the growth in total global steel production. While India and South Korea have contributed, production from China overwhelmingly leads globally. Accounting for half of global steel production, analysts worldwide monitor China's monthly production figures closely for signs of economic strength but also to gauge forward pricing expectations based on global demand and the production response of competing mills overseas.Between 2004 and 2014, China increased its annual steel production almost three times to about 823 million tons. At that volume, China's steel...

Volume of crude steel production in China increased to 709 million metric tonnes in 2012, which was almost half of all crude steel produced in the world. The other largest producers (Japan, United States, India, Russia and South Korea) taken together, in 2012 produced 407 million metric tonnes of crude steel, which is equal to 27% of world production. During 2000-2012 production of crude still in China grew more than 6 times. Annual growth during last eleven years was about 18%.
Per capita steel use in China reached 445 kg of crude steel equivalent per capita in 2010, which is equal to the level of developed countries. It means that in...